A Growing Concern

Ballona Land Trust tangles with the Bay Foundation over invasive plant removal

By Gary Walker

Volunteers remove ice plant from the Ballona Wetlands during a Friends of Ballona Restoration Day eventPhoto courtesy of Lisa Fimiani

A long-running feud over how to eradicate invasive plant species from the Ballona Wetlands went before the California Coastal Commission this month, with the nonprofit Bay Foundation ultimately prevailing in its request to pull weeds from targeted restoration areas on a year-round schedule.

The Bay Foundation and volunteers with the nonprofit Friends of Ballona Wetlands removed 15 tons of non-native ice plant between September and November of last year, according to Bay Foundation records. The work came in response to unprecedented growth triggered by drought-busting winter rainfall.

Last year biologists covered patches of ice plant with tarps to kill them with the trapped heat of the sun, a process known as solarization that other local wetlands groups have criticized as either too severe or ineffective without immediate re-planting of native species. The Bay Foundation reported a 100% reduction of invasive species where biolo-
gists employed both solarization and hand-pulling. But as those efforts continue, the Bay Foundation will only be pulling out plants by hand during the remainder of this year, according to a Coastal Commission report.

The Bay Foundation’s request had been challenged by the Ballona Land Trust, a Playa del Rey advocacy group that has sued the Bay Foundation for records related to its role in the environmental study that will guide the state’s overall restoration efforts in the roughly 600-acre ecological preserve. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state’s Coastal Conservancy are also collaborating on that report, which has been delayed more than five years but is due out later this year.

The Ballona Land Trust has previously called for greater public transparency in that process and broader collaboration with other wetlands advocates, most of whom have differences of opinions about what the goals and techniques of the state restoration should be.

At the Aug. 11 hearing, the Ballona Land Trust unsuccessfully petitioned the Coastal Commission to amend the Bay Foundation’s invasive plant removal permit in several ways to require the public release of planning and monitoring data, impose an official temporary stay on solarization, and allow the Ballona Land Trust to help.

Walter Lamb, president of the Ballona Land Trust, tried to frame the debate as less of a clash between adversaries than a disagreement between allies of the wetlands.

“I love the Ballona Wetlands,” he said. “Please don’t look at this as us-against-them.”

A committee that includes Heal the Bay and Los Angeles Waterkeeper offered a written endorsement of the Bay Foundation’s existing methodology as both adaptable and effective in its efforts “to restore ecological balance and functional integrity to a highly degraded portion of the Ballona Wetlands.”

Despite the commission’s vote, Lamb later issued a statement saying the group hopes the Bay Foundation’s effort is successful.

“Sometimes it feels like Ballona is just a fight,” said Coastal Commission Chairwoman Danya Bochco, “but it seems like everyone is trying to help it, not hurt it.”

3 Comments

Alex – I’m not sure why you think I forgot that I volunteered over 20 hours on the project or what point you are trying to make. A more direct comment would have been more productive. The “15 tons” metric makes no sense because: a) the goal of the project was actually to leave the desiccated iceplant in place as mulch; and b) you can’t measure progress toward the restoration of native species simply by weighing the removed invasive vegetation. It is what grows back that matters, and in every other project that this project was modeled on, extra measures were taken to give natives species an advantage over non-natives. That didn’t happen with this project which is why the site was overrun with invasive weeds after 500 hours of volunteer effort and $28,000 of funds which aren’t that easy to come by at Ballona.

Over two months after we first notified the project team that invasive weeds were sprouting on the project site, we learned by chance that a permit amendment was being requested (belatedly) without any published monitoring data or species-level management plan. We felt that the public deserved to hear more detail about the project plans moving forward, and we were able to facilitate constructive discussion and achieve much of what we wanted moving forward. I’d be curious to hear what upsets you about that.

As noted in the article, we hope that the project is ultimately successful and we are confident that are efforts to increase project accountability have also increased the likelihood of eventual success. We have continued to offer assistance to the project. Call or e-mail me any time if you want to have a constructive discussion about the Ballona Wetlands. I’d be curious to hear your views on why a three-story garage should be constructed in the ecological reserve, or why a commercial parking lot should continue to be allowed to operate in the reserve.